Vernon Volumes

Vernon Volumes text

Friday, December 29, 2017

This year we went to Kansas City to spend the Christmas holiday with our KC family. It was a whole new setup since everyone has moved to the same neighborhood in Blue Springs. We were excited to see everyone's new houses and to celebrate Christmas together. Before we arrived, we were sad to hear that Griffin was diagnosed with "Hand Foot Mouth" and had some contagious rashes. Everyone talked and decided it would probably be best to keep Graydon separate from him so he could still be with everyone and he stayed at Grandma Genies with us.

We got in on Friday, and the first night the girls made Grandma's famous cookies.

It was super cold, but Amanda and Nate still got out to run, and they invited me along. We got bundled up and stayed mostly warm and got our fitness.

On Saturday, we went to see Andrea's Aunt Marilyn in the hospital. She had been planning to host the Anders Christmas celebration at her place, but wasn't feeling well so we visited her instead.

Overnight it snowed and on Christmas Eve we woke up to a couple inches of snow. The Chiefs played that day and we got some BBQ and watched the game at Grandma's house.

After the game, some of us put on our snow gear, and we played out front. Amanda brought one of Graydon's Christmas gifts, a sled, and we played outside until we were frozen solid.

Connor had watched a documentary on Otzi the ice man on the airplane and posed like him in the snow.

In the evening, we put on our church outfits and went to the church in Odessa for Christmas Eve service.

Christmas morning, everyone except for Griffin and Ryan came over to Grandmas to open presents. We took a few pics in front of the tree of our group and then everyone jumped in and opened their gifts.

The rest of the day (and the rest of the week), we relaxed around the houses, tried to stay warm, and tried to stay healthy. Connor and Paige spent the night with the Rudolphs a couple of times and watched some Mizzou football and basketball.

On Wednesday, Abby took the cousins all out for a fun day together. They all went through Taco Bell for Connor and then brought it to McDonalds and everyone ate there together. The kids wanted to play in the ball pit, but with all the germs around they thought better of it. After lunch, they went to Target and did a little shopping. On the way home, Abby took everyone for custard at "Custard's Last Stand".

Late in the week, we heard that Griffin was feeling better and his rash was mostly cleared up. Andrea and I went over to the Gobles house and hung out with Griffin and Amanda for a little while in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, while we were there, Griffin seemed a little lethargic. Amanda checked his oxygen levels and they were in the low 90's. Amanda hooked him up to their oxygen machine and suctioned his nose, but his oxygen levels stayed low and they eventually had to take him to the hospital. He had to stay at the hospital.

Wednesday night, we went back to Grandma Genie's and I played with Graydon and we did some Legos together. We'd really enjoyed all the time we got with Graydon since he was staying at Grandma's with us. We had been taking everyone's temperatures throughout the week and Graydon's had been a little high. On Thursday morning Grandma Genie took him to the doctor and they found that he had Influenza A. Graydon had to go back to his house after that and it was definitely quieter and lonelier without the little guy around.

On Thursday, the kids hung out with the Rudolphs and Nate had a choir party for his students. Connor and Paige were pumped to see his students and Nate let us stop by for a little while. Connor enjoyed playing ping pong with the high school students, and we ate some of Nate's hotdogs and hamburgers that he grilled in the freezing weather.

On Friday, we took family pictures in the morning. It was supposed to be a big group photo of everyone, but with the sicknesses, we just did an appointment with our family. In the afternoon we played a lot of board games with the Rudolphs and ate at McAlister's Deli one last time. We had such a fun visit, although it was definitely not everything we'd imagined since the Gobles' guys were sick. We barely got to see Ryan and Griffin during our visit and hope that we will get to catch up with them soon.

It was neat to see everyone's new houses, and we appreciate everyone's hospitality during our visit. Merry Christmas and farewell to 2017!

Genie sends me nice emails from time to time after reading the blog and I thought I'd add her response to this one below.
On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 12:06 AM, Genie Anders wrote:
What an awesome story of our Christmas time together. I always enjoy the story and all the pics. It was a wonderful week. I enjoyed it sooo much. It wasn't exactly how we thought it would be, but we all made the best of it. Thanks for taking all the pics and telling our story. You are awesome and I appreciate you so much. You are an incredible husband, dad, uncle, and son. I love you so much. Genie

Monday, December 18, 2017

Today I did holiday centers in Paige's classroom. It was something she's been looking forwards to for a while now and she was so excited for me to come. I hadn't been to her classroom since "meet the teacher day", so it was nice to see her teacher and classmates. I volunteered to do a Christmas ornament center and Paige and some of her buddies started off with me. We glued some puzzle pieces to a piece of cardboard and decorated some fun Christmas pictures of the kids that Ms Mills had taken.

Ms Mills had forgotten her camera, so she used mine to snap some photos of everyone.

It was so nice to be able to take some time to see Paige in her element and get a feel for how her days must be in her school. She's such a special girl and I am so happy to see how much she enjoys school and her friends and classmates. Some of the other parents had volunteered in the past and had good things to say about Paige as well, which definitely made my day.

This weekend we celebrated Christmas, and Santa came to visit. Saturday night we did our tradition of watching "Home Alone" and then we got everything ready for Santa's visit. The kids wrote some letters to Santa and said farewell to our Elf on the Shelf: Gin.

The next morning, we got up early and the kids were excited to see what Santa brought. The kids never upgraded from the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One, and this year the upgraded Xbox came out and Santa brought them the Xbox One X. Santa brought Paige a karaoke microphone that she can plug in to any device, but she wasn't super excited about it when she saw it. It took a little while for her to understand what it really was.

After the kids went through Santa's goodies, we passed out the presents and took turns opening everything.

Paige was excited to get some Hatchimals, a new watch, books and an LOL doll. Connor got Madden 18 for the new Xbox, books, a new ping pong paddle, a tennis bag, and the final 4 NFL Beanie Ballz he needed to complete his collection. We also got some new board games to play together.

It was a wonderful family celebration and we enjoy our family time together.